Projects

Pacific Proa Adventure Project June-July 2013
This project will demonstrate that an Australian built boat can combine modern sustainable materials with traditional proa design principles to produce a fast, efficient ocean-going vessel.

Ini is also passionate about climate change and concerned about its impacts on Pacific Island nations. The project therefore also aims to help draw attention to climate change impacts in the Pacific including sea level rise, shifting rainfall patterns and increased frequency and intensity of storms.

The plan is to leave in mid June from Sydney and sail about 13 days to the Kingdom of Tonga, where we’ll spend a week or so.

Heavily affected by global warming, villagers in Kanokupolu in Tongatapu’s western district are fighting sea level rise and more frequent storms. We will be visiting Nuku Alofa, where Mark Blevedere is restoring to full sailing condition a real Tongan Kalia,132ft long. A traditional Tongan proa with two masts.

Then we’ll leave for Noumea, which should take about 7 days. We will spend a week exploring there before heading off on our final leg of the voyage, sailing back to Sydney and visiting some remote reefs on the way.

Round the world, fossil fuel free! (dates tbc) Gaiasdream will attempt to become the first sail-powered proa to circumnavigate the earth. On the way she’ll be collecting stories of how climate change is affecting coastal communities.

Departing westbound from Sydney, Gaiasdream will sail to Darwin and then nonstop across the Indian Ocean to Cape Town. From there she will sail to Antigua before transiting the Panama Canal. She then hopes to visit a number of Pacific islands on her way back to Sydney.

The aims of this unique expedition are:

To be the first ever sail-powered proa to circumnavigate the world.

To do the voyage ‘fossil fuel free’ with the help of wind and solar energy, veggie oil and ethanol.

To collect stories from coastal communities around the world on how global-warming is affecting them, with a particular focus on low-lying communities in the Pacific Ocean.

To prove that it is possible to built and operate a low greenhouse gas emissions yacht with al the mod cons apart from air conditioning.

The famous yacht designer Dick Newick once said that if traditional Polynesian sailors/boat builders had access to epoxy, they would have sailed to Europe.

So this summer we intend to prove that the Pacific Proa, the favoured design of traditional Polynesian sailors over centuries, is capable of a circumnavigation, aided by the addition of a few modern materials and navigation aids,

rael dobkins

Good luck to you all, May the winds of freedom take you into the history books, May Gaiasdream leave her foot print in four oceans, May the pacific proa rule again as it did before….
May d force b wit ya, gods speed.